 we're gonna get started here in like 30 seconds. Let some more people come into our session. Okay, so welcome to our NEA Foundation Global Learning Fellows and Alumni presentation. We're gonna be presenting about global connections in the classroom. So I'm gonna go over the agenda and then we're gonna go on to introductions. So here is what we'll be doing. So welcome all. Before we begin, could you please put ES if you're elementary, MS, middle school, or HS before your name so we can split you into the correct breakout rooms. And so that means rename yourself with either ES for elementary, MS for middle school, or HS for high school. And if you're not sure how to do that, just go onto your picture and then there's three dots on the right side, click on those dots and click rename. We're gonna go on to meet the panel after that. Then we're gonna learn about what global learning is and what the NEA Foundation does. After that, global connections defined. Then we're gonna get to hear from our presenters about global connections in their classroom. And they come from different grade levels, different states, and also different schools. Then we're gonna go on to the breakout sessions. So you can start thinking about ideas, what you wanna share and also what you learned. And then we're gonna do share out and upcoming webinars as well. So for those coming in, rename yourself for ES for elementary school, MS for middle school, or HS for high school and put that before your name. And this is the agenda. And I see more people are coming in. So this is the agenda for today. Okay, so we're gonna go on to meet the global learning fellows. Hi everyone, I'm excited to be here with you all tonight. My name is Makisha. I'm most people just call me Makisha. I'm a K through five instructional technology specialist in Atlanta, Georgia. And I'm super excited to be here with you all tonight. So hi all, my name is Jennifer Macias Morris. I'm a first grade Spanish immersion teacher in Spokane, Washington. I teach at the Libby Center. And I was a global learning fellow in 2019. All right, welcome everybody. So glad you're here. I'm Andy Webb. I'm a K2 instructional coach and teacher from Wilmington, North Carolina. And I am a current in EA global fellow. Hello everybody. I'm Don Jenkins. I teach at North Libby Middle School and I teach virtually online part-time at a high school too. And I'm seven through 12 social studies and I am GLF 2020. And I put a couple of dots there because we've been extended out a couple of times, but grateful to be going to Peru next summer. Welcome everyone. My name is Kara Kassler. And I am from Columbus, Ohio. I teach German and English language learners. And although it says Patasco, Ohio, it's Columbus is the easiest big city that we're near. And I am from the global learning fellowship class of 2018, South Africa. Hi everybody. I'm Chris Gleason. I'm from Sampere, Wisconsin. I teach instrumental music in a tent right now because, you know, look, it's safer. And from the 2018 global leadership fellowship that went to South Africa. Hi everybody. I am Sandra McKelsky. I teach at Davisville Middle School. I'm located in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. I teach seventh grade geography and I went to South Africa in 2019. Hello everyone. My name is Rufu De Leon. And I teach at the Sarazal University in Manila, Philippines. I am a fellow of the International Leaders in Education program. That's a program sponsored by the US Department of State. And in 2015, I had the opportunity to work with Sandra McKelsky under the Teachers for Global Classrooms program. Thanks for having me. Hi everybody. Welcome to this exciting night. My name is Terri Anderson and I'm a special educator at a Waitley Elementary School in Western Massachusetts. And I'm a global learning fellow from 2018. We went to South Africa and it was the greatest thing ever. Hi, good evening everyone. Thank you for being here. My name is Mary Rikiki. I am a teacher at Independence Middle School in Jupiter, Florida. I teach Holocaust and Genocide Studies and World Geography Electors. I am a global fellow for 2020 which is set and slated to be Peru. Awesome. Thank you all for introducing ourselves. Now we're gonna have one of our NEA Foundation representatives talk about what global learning fellows is and what the NEA Foundation does with global learning fellows. Thanks so much, Jennifer. Hi, my name is Elizabeth Schneider and I'm the Chief Officer for Strategic Initiatives at the NEA Foundation. We are thrilled to be with you today with former global learning fellows and with others who are interested in global confidence. The NEA Foundation is dedicated to promoting the best in public education and we do that in several ways. One of which you're seeing manifest tonight is the investment in individual educators' leadership and building their skills to advance their students' performance. We also work with a number of organizations around education equity and excellence and partnership with them and we work to ensure that educators' voices heard in policy. The Global Learning Fellows Program is a year-long cohort-based learning opportunity for educators, elementary, middle and high to refine their craft and to think about the importance of building global competence. In this increasingly diverse and interdependent world, this program is of more and more significance it seems as every year goes by and we are really grateful for the continued investment of time and energy of the alumni who stay connected and continue to learn together. So we are really pleased for them to be here to share some of their learning with a broader audience and look forward to engaging with all of you. Thank you. Jennifer, I'm also gonna mention one other quick thing I'm gonna put into the chat. We have a new grant opportunity that we are announcing that we have announced today Envision Equity Grants. This, along with two other grant programs that the Foundation offers, Student Success Grants and Learning and Leadership Grants are available to all educators and we would really appreciate and welcome you all sharing this with your network, sharing it out on social media and taking a close look at it in case it's something you're interested in applying for. Awesome, Elizabeth. Thanks for informing us about the Global Learning Fellows and also this awesome new grant that you're putting in. I think it's really awesome to see the different initiatives coming in from the NEA Foundation. We're gonna go on to Global Connections Defined by Mckisha. Yeah, thank you so much. Elizabeth, thank you Jennifer. Thank you so much. I'm so excited for tonight and I'm excited to hear these amazing educators talk about global connections in their classroom and this slide is basically to remind you that as you think about global connections in your classroom, think of it as an amazing opportunity for you all to build global competence. So global competence, this is one definition according to the organization for economic cooperation and development. It is the capacity to examine local, global and intercultural issues to understand and appreciate the perspectives and worldview of others to engage and open appropriate and effective interactions with people from different cultures and to act with collective wellbeing and sustainable development. I feel like that was such a mouthful. All right. So also on this slide is a graphic of the SDGs that sustainable development goals. These are a great way to connect your classrooms as well and build that global competence. And I think we're ready to go ahead and get started with our first presenter. Yeah. So our first presenter is Chris Gleason. I'm gonna, he wants to do his own sharing on the screen. So let's do this. All right. Hey everybody. So probably in no other time in history have we been so connected, I mean by a worldwide pandemic, right? And so finding ways to reach out to students not just throughout the United States but across the world has been something that has been really moving to my students. They felt isolated. I don't know about you, but my kids felt isolated in their homes and so on. And this was a way for them to reach out. Now, before the pandemic hit, we had due to the Global Learning Fellowship and so on really inspired me to reach out and do a lot more. And so I'm gonna share with you just things that we've done in the recent past. You can see that in 2019, we reached out to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. And what was cool about this project is that the kids really took ownership in it. So I'm gonna show you a quick video, the one on the right here. These are two of the students that kind of led the kids through our own school. Seven BU literacy room, learn about ecosystems, and this is like a quiet space in here. You can learn about different animals. I'm Verhano and my camera girl is Teetai. Welcome to our seventh grade campus tour. So as I said before, we're a college prep school and we also offer a lot of activities such as sports. One room in the distance is the school store. That's where you buy. Okay, now you could see the topography of Wisconsin in winter. And then my students looking at these kids in Ethiopia and just the connections. They're like, dude, they've got green plants and you know, and other things. So very surface level at first, but what was cool is the back and forth continued for a couple of months. And it got deeper and richer and the conversations centered around those standards. So we're talking about what's water quality like and not just beyond music. Music was our entry point, but then it was going deeper than that. Now this past year, we actually looked at two places at one time, Perth, Australia and then Johannesburg, South Africa. And in both instances was really fun and the kids, they really took ownership again and they enjoyed hearing from classmates across the world. Here's Perth, Australia. Good day. I'm gonna be performing a soundscape. In this performance, we imitate the sounds of the Australian bush including leaf crunching, rain, frogs, birds, cricket and wind with that instrument. Sleaf crunching is made by violins and violas pushing and scraping their bows against the back of the instruments. The rain is made with- Okay and cute, right? But here's the thing, the kids just, you know what they accent, right? But they were leaning into their screens and they were riveted to listening to this and finding out more. And then by the time they were done with that video, they came back with even more questions and so on. And then the last one that we've done probably the most recently here is Johannesburg, South Africa. And this is what- Yay! Nope, not the wrong one. That button. My name is Bukitawari and I play piano as an instrument. My favorite thing about music is that I can freely express myself in this class and not get judged for what I like and what I don't like. And the skills that I learn from this class are very necessary for going into a lifestyle or a career in music later on in life. Yeah, okay, very articulate too. So it was, I mean, it was joyous because the kids found three really important things. Autonomy, they understood mastery and then purpose. They understood the relevance of doing this but they also had, I empowered them to say, okay, what do you want to find out? What do you want to know about? And then fed them some of these standards and so they were feeding off of that and then the connection made. Boy, they just loved it. So it's been a great experience. This is something that will continue. The thing that we're really excited about is this next year we're gonna commission a composer to write a piece honoring Nelson Mandela's life and then connect kids from South Africa actually doing the vocal and the singing along with the concert band here all simultaneous through technology and so on. So that's where we're headed next. That's my three minutes. I'm out. Awesome, thank you so much for sharing that with us, Chris. And I hope all those music teachers are in our, and all the teachers have got some cool ideas from that. So we're gonna move on to Andy and she's gonna talk about how she connects her classroom. Thank you, Jennifer. I hope you all can give me some grace and understanding Jennifer's gonna help me with the screen as I'm having tech issues this evening. So thank you for understanding. If the first topic that I wanted to talk about and resource is Skype as scientists. So if you don't mind clicking on that link, please. Thank you. So if you are interested in connecting your students doesn't matter if it's elementary, middle, or high school this is a great resource because you can connect your students with scientists across the world. There's a huge database of scientists and you can choose who you want to participate with maybe, excuse me, maybe choose a subject, what have you and do whatever you choose that would benefit your students with Skype as scientists around the world. So that's one great resource, highly recommend. So thank you for that, Jennifer. The next resource is Twofold and it's the National Geographic Explore Classroom. So if you can click on that link. Hi, I'm Garcia, okay, here is this. So one reason it's Twofold is because the Explore Classroom can allow you to connect your students with Explores around the world and they will actually have live interaction where the children can ask questions and dialogue with real everyday scientists so that your kids can see a scientist is not always this man in a lab coat working in some sterile environment. Scientists can be working all around the world doing many different things and it really helps your children understand that they can explore the world just like all of these different people that are conducting science research around the world. And then it's Twofold because another great resource for global connections is the National Geographic Educator Certification Process. So you can go through that and become a National Geographic Certified Educator yourself and there are teachers around the world who are also certified and there's a community that is many people are very involved and share lots of different resources and it's all free, so you can't beat that. So there's the Skype, the Sciences Explorer Classroom and the National Geographic Educator Certification. And then my final resource to share with you is one that it's a labor of love. I spent a long time compiling all these resources. If you will Jennifer click on that link please and scroll down some, it's a blog but it's housed, my spreadsheet is housed there. You can keep on going down and this is what I consider a treasure trove of resources. There are over 200 grant and fellowship links and deadline information, synopsis of what the grant or the fellowship is. So I spent some of them I have participated in, others I've heard from different people and they highly recommend them. Many of them are at no cost. You go through an application process. Some are reduced costs and then there are some that may require pay but those are much less than the ones that are either subsidized or free. So please peruse those resources and see what you may be interested in because through many of these different experiences you can connect your students with people around the globe but you can also travel yourself to different places just like we do with the Global Learning Fellowship and you can connect with educators around the globe in person and hopefully build those connections that will last long after the program. So you can continue to communicate with the educators and connect your students as well. So three resources I highly recommend free and joy and let me know if you have any questions. Happy to answer. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. I'll definitely be looking at that Excel sheet. That's awesome. Oh, it should be on there. I know it was on there, yes. Senator Elizabeth said I need to add the Global Learning Fellowship. It should be on there. So next up we have Terry. Candy, that was an amazing list. I'm going to be delving into that myself. Thank you. Definitely a labor of love. Thank you. And thank you for sharing it. That was a lot of work. Really excited to talk to you all about these three ideas and the first one is Empatico, which some of you have heard about, but Empatico is just an incredible resource for us. Usually for elementary, the right now they're kind of in the grade one to six ballpark, but they've been expanding. So you have to just stay tuned. We've been doing it at our school for three years and we started out with international connections and that's what you usually think of with Empatico. And in this first picture, you see the teacher from Nigeria and he and I became friends, from just contacting each other and making the arrangements for what time and so forth. And these are our students over here. We're from a very small school in Western Massachusetts. It's pretty rural. So having a chance to meet people that are different from our kids is an incredible opportunity for them and just mind brought me. And so important for our kids that are gonna live in a global world. So, but one of the challenges, it's worth it, but one of the challenges of working within an international school is the time difference. So we had to have our kids come in early before school to match up with their time. But then last year, we did an Empat... Well, we did a lot of them, but one of them was with a class in Virginia. So from Massachusetts, it was pretty easy. And they were so different than our students that it was really valuable. When we first were matched with them, it was a little bit of a disappointment. Oh, it's Virginia, you know? We thought we might get Barcelona or something, but it really worked out so well. The kids were from a whole different walk of life and our kids learned a lot from them. Now, this year, Empatico has come up with a new program and it's called Empathy Across the US. And so it's a pilot program right now, but I'm sure that it'll be continuing next year. And what they've done is they have taken your school demographic and partnered you with a class in the United States that's just very different from you, racially or culturally. And so once again, it has given our students a really great opportunity. And I've been leading that districtwide this year and we have about 10 teachers that were brave to sign up because this year, as you know, as teachers, it was a really hard thing to put your hand up and volunteer for something else. So I'm really proud of the momentum that we've made in our district and I strongly urge you to check that out. There's the link there. It's free. They have all the lesson plans. You get on the dashboard. It has all the plans. It has cues for questions, reflections. Everything is already done. And the people that run the program are so creative, thoughtful and intelligent. They just, it's really an amazing program I highly endorse it. The second one, Asante-Sana for Education is a nonprofit foundation in Tanzania to promote education in Tanzania. And before Empatica was ever invented for us, my school has been connecting with the Asante-Sana for Education, which means thank you very much. And so we've had, we had old fashioned Skype calls for the last eight years with their students, sometimes with the preschool and other times with the high school. And that has been really a wonderful opening, eye opening for our kids. And now we do an annual fundraiser for this program and we're pretty tightly connected. And that third picture that you see that has our Waitley banner. Oh, in the first one, there's a Waitley banner too. I had the opportunity to go there in 2017. And I don't know if Joe Underwood is on this call, but he's a 2018 Global Fellow and he got to do the same experience the following year. And it was just amazing to me to see in these different schools, they would have our Waitley banner hanging that we had all signed. It was just incredible. And then the last thing I have here, there's a little bit of a homegrown thing, but I have invited a lot of different people to come into the school and speak. Obviously not this year, we've done that, but by Zoom. And I am connected with an independent school in the area of high school and they have many international students. So I've been bringing in those students yearly and they've come in to speak to the classes, this girl's from Afghanistan. And so it's just brought a lot of information and humanity and connection to our school or small little school. So I highly recommend it. I have my email up there. If anybody wants to be in touch and get any more information about any of this. Thank you so much. Terry, we have one quick question from Laura. She asks, do they match you or can you choose? Is it a year-long program or just a one-time connection with Empadico? Well, it's not, it's really as long as you want it to be. It could be a year-long, it could be several years long. And they match you, but if it's not something to your liking, you just don't accept. And then someone else will try to match with you. Look at a little dating game. Thanks, Terry. My internet jumped out for a second there, but Isabel, did you get a chance to ask me if it would be okay to share that list on our website, attributing it to her? Absolutely. Awesome. Well, thank you, Terry. And I've also used Empadico and what's nice is if you're an immersion, a Spanish immersion teacher, they also have it in Spanish. You could connect with others in Spanish from different countries as well. And we've used it, we did it with Mexico City and the kids loved it. So it's a pretty awesome program. We're gonna go on to Don. So this is pretty similar to Empadico. It's E-PALS except that you create your own profile and you put down what you want as far as a project and you put down your language. It's for ages three through 19. So that really opens it up for a lot of projects. And you can look through other teachers around the world and look at what projects they wanna do and then you contact them. And from there, you set up the parameters of what you want your students to do. So I put my information on there and then a teacher from India contacted me and we set up the project and we exchanged all our files through Google Drive. So we just shared a Google Drive, Google folder and we dropped files in there, we dropped videos in there and then it was very easy for us to show our students what they were working on. So kind of like the other project we started with a cultural exchange. So the students in India showed us their lunchroom and the food they like to eat and that got the kids really interested because they love food. And then I had my students play instruments and then the students in India played instruments and they made videos of it and the students were really interested in what they were playing instruments, what types of instruments they had. And one of my students played WAM, careless whisper on the saxophone which I didn't know that was possible and that was really great. And then from there, we went into the main part of the project which was pollution and I had my students break up into groups and they chose what they wanted to research in our area for pollution. So we went into the history of it. They researched possible solutions and then they developed a project and they chose what type of project they wanted to do. Some people did slide shows, some kids did videos and then we just shared it on the Google folder. They watched it and looked over it in India and they did the same for us. And it probably took, I think we probably spent about two or three months total on the project and students really got a lot. They were able to compare similarities and pollution and problems that they had in India. Same thing we had in the Pacific Northwest and this served as a foundation for Andy mentioned the National Geographic Educator certification. So this project was the foundation for that, for my certification. And the other thing I wanna briefly mention and this will lead into the next presentation is I did a project with a class in Germany that top set up and we talked about the 2020 presidential election with a class in Germany. And they only have that every four years but look for that in a couple of years because that was a great project too. So I'm happy to answer any questions. The site for ePALS is really easy and I'll put it in the chat, it's just ePALS.com. Thank you, Dawn. That was awesome to hear how you teamed up with India especially for pollution. I mean, it's a big thing right now and trying to come up with solutions. Thank you for sharing. So now we're gonna go on with Kira. Yes, and this slide, I was told I only had one slide so that's why it seems a little hectic and crazy but that kind of actually describes my life. So I teach German but I also teach English language learners and I really wanna encourage you to investigate GAVE. Stands for German American Virtual Exchange do not let the German part of it scare you because actually I did many of these materials with my English language learners. They are all in English and I set them up to exchange with American students in my high school. So we had two exchanges going one with a school in Germany and one with the English language learners in my high school and the American students in my high school to teach them a little about other cultures. So it is a virtual exchange between German and American high school students if you're looking for a high school activity. The exchanges can last four to six weeks. Ours that you'll see my partner, one of my partner schools there, we made it last actually pretty much the whole semester. So students complete getting to know you activities. And again, like Terry said, I used Empatico too and Terry you need to know you're my very first Skype ever please don't be afraid to Skype in the United States with your students. It is just as valuable of an experience. So they completed getting to know you activities like Empatico, everything is done for you. And if you don't like one of their getting to know you activities, there are four other ones to choose from in each lesson. The lessons are arranged into units. One topic that we did was everyday life but there's also one on sustainability. So within that, there's four getting to know you activities around the topic of sustainability. There are four getting to know you topics in the area of bullying, sports and discrimination and stereotypes are all units that they have released already on the GAVE websites. They also have exchange activities. You're expected to complete two of them but there are four for you. So you can choose which two you want to do. And they are all in German, all in English and are all free. The reflection I thought was the most interesting parts for my students. They had never met a student from another country ever. There is no German knowledge necessary and anywhere with internet access. I did link to an article I wrote about our exchange on this slide as well for the Ohio Foreign Language Association. Basically we used padlets because like Terry was saying the time difference is always a challenge. We did have one live meeting but most of our work was done on padlets and all of the exchanges, sorry, the units and with a final product that they have to complete and that is the we video you see down at the bottom. So two students, one from Germany one from the United States collaborated to create a video of activities they could do offline. It was also interesting for my students to learn that Germans in this particular community that we were exchanging with were not allowed out of their house for two weeks and we were back in school. We've been in school since August full-time, no hybrid, all students everywhere. So it was very eye-opening for me and the students. And my contact information is at the top. I encourage you to go to the Goethe Institute. That's how you say that GOE word. Goethe is probably the most famous German poet. These are institutes all throughout the world just for the study of German. But again, all these materials are in English so go to the Goethe Institute page and check it out and these are all live links on my slide as well. So feel free to click away. Thank you so much. I'll have to definitely check that out. That's so cool, especially they could be used even though you don't teach German. Yes. Here's some of them. We'll do that next. Okay, so now Sandra will be presenting with Rufo. Hello everybody. So happy that you're joining us this evening. I am going to speak with my colleague Sir Rufo about a relationship that developed, I would say, organically. Many of us have traveled quite a bit and one thing I'm encouraging everybody to do is to network. So back in 2015, I was selected to be a part of the Teachers for Global classrooms and that is a program through the United States State Department. And this took me to the Philippines where I was matched with Sir Rufo and he acted as my mentor as he taught me about the Filipino education system. And from there, we fostered a professional relationship and decided that what we started learning and doing together in 2015, we wanted to continue. And so I'm now going to pass it on to my colleagues, Sir Rufo. Thank you, Sandy. I'd like to say you are very lucky to have Sandy McKelsky in our school. I can just imagine that up to now we still have great connections. So it has been six years now. Thank you again, Sandy. I'd like to share with you that some of my colleagues in Hussarizal University are with us today. So after the program, when Sandy went back to the U.S., she had come up with the idea of a project called cultural mandalas. And I still have some here. Thank you. Which she initially used in her classroom. So we had several exchanges over chat and messenger about it and how to come up with it. And then she finally sent it through snail mail. So it's like, it took about two months before it reached the Philippines. So the mandalas are circles that have pie wages that describe the aspects of culture. So again, I'm showing it to you how we did it. Could be about food, religion, language, clothing and the government. The pictures are just amazing. And these are symbols also to represent the students attributes of their culture. And at the back of the mandala here, there's a poem that's entitled, I Am. And since I teach seventh graders and I teach English, I also use that opportunity to practice them in poetry writing. But I also inform my students that their work, the mandalas would be sent to the U.S. to be studied by the students of Sandy. So in my classes, my students enjoyed holding and seeing the drawings and reading the poems to American students. And perhaps just like the students of Sandy, questions about the U.S. culture were also asked. And interestingly, they were able, they were able to see similarities and differences in our culture, such as preference for music, clothing and sports. So this is allowed my students to explore other cultures in the world, deepen their understanding of other people that regardless of diversity in race, distance and religion or culture, we still live under the same sun. I believe that the project as this one, the swapping project will somehow make our students observe, reflect and think meaningfully. So I have been emphasizing also in my students and in my co-teachers that global citizenship is a 21st century skill. And I am so delighted that this kind of interactions between Sandy and me, I have been an initial step toward developing such competence. I am also happy to share that Sandy included me again in a recent international grant that sought to help students build their resilience and sustain a good mental health during this pandemic. And I'm also pleased that in this undertaking, a colleague of mine by the name of Lorenza de Guzman, she is here in the Zoom room, helped me carry this out by asking her students to draw out artwork about resilience and write insightful essays. And lastly, one remarkable point Sandy and I have been keeping is our connection. Now it's even more possible because of the help of technology. She has also been generously, I'm very proud to say this one, sending out a number of boxes of books to the Philippines and these five child schools in the Philippines rebuild their library. So again, I am grateful that Sandy and I have been partners in helping Filipino and American students become global learners. Thank you. And I just wanna say just quickly that when the pandemic became more and more clear that this was gonna be a global problem, we were just very lucky that the State Department offered up a grant opportunity. And it was through this collaboration that Sir Rufo and I, and along with two other Filipino educators designed and created this project that enabled us to purchase more than 800 youth resilience related books and also teacher educator resources to help our students through this time. And the experiences are maybe but all are impacting our children greatly. And it's only through working together that we are able to help our students. So please build those relationships, continue networking and it can be something very simple as swapping through the mail or something more grand that's grant funded. So we're happy that you're here this evening sharing ideas, thank you. Thank you so much. I think it's awesome that you kept the relationship after all those years. So it's, yeah, definitely do reach out when you do get as Sandra said, just seeing that connection. Next up is Mary, she will be talking about how she does international global connections in her classroom. Thank you, let me just share it. I'm going to share the global connections that I do as it's loading. Hold on, is it presenting? Okay, so I'm gonna begin over here. I incorporate a lot of the United Nations sustainable development goals into my classroom and being a Holocaust genocide educator. I wanna bring in what the United Nations has to offer since they were created pretty much right after World War II. So I focus a lot on goals 16 in my classroom and we recently just did a UN tour. We did a few of them this year. We've had a virtual tour where they've taken us on the journey of all the 17 sustainable goals but also showed us where these decisions are being made and how they're being done. And I put in there the link itself. Where they have redesigned to adjust to the pandemic. They have now Black History virtual tour. They have women's roles in society virtual tours. There's a whole list of themes that go around what the UN is all about and pretty much the equity that they wanna strive for. I also just recently through the DGC, which I put the email here to contact them, got in touch with someone who deals specifically with genocide and they connected with my students to talk about how the United Nation tries preventing genocide. And some of the challenges, one of the biggest challenges is not all the countries are signatory members in eradicating genocide. So this becomes kind of where my students were thinking fast forward. How can they make those countries become a member? So the United Nations has a wealth of information as we know, but there's also opportunities for them to come mainstream into your classroom. I also bring in a lot of international trip opportunities to my students. I organize many different places for my students to talk to. It's an opportunity to kind of connect with what I'm doing in the classroom. But I've taken small groups, I've taken large groups and we've traveled pretty much all over the world. But the most important thing is the academic element that is being fused into the trip. And I offer those during spring break and I offer those during summer. My students at the end of the school year were realizing that we throw out way too much books, pretty much used nice, you know, not so much used books in the garbage at the end of the school year. There might be like half a notebook filled in and there's still pretty much half a book that can still be used. And we started partnering up with an organization called United Schools that was willing to take our materials that were gently used and would be shipping them over to Nicaragua. And I wound up visiting the school to see where our materials were going. And there were kids that were keeping our binders that our kids generally were throwing out right after the school year was over. These kids were holding onto them for three, four years straight just due to the fact that it's so hard to come by. So that reality of what we think is just a wasteable object at the end of the school year becomes a longevity somewhere else. We also bring in a lot of virtual exhibits into my class. I just connected with humans of the Holocaust and they actually have a virtual exhibit museum that is pretty, you feel like you're in a museum and it's very interactive. This is the link here, but essentially to show you what my students have done is the curator and the photographer will actually connect. And my students always write thank you cards after the presentation, but they will connect with the students to talk about modern connections that are happening in terms of hate crimes, in terms of anti-Semitism and how it connects historically. So there's a modern element and historical element that goes in it. So he'll just, I'm not gonna put the whole thing, but it kind of shows projects. And I'm the grandson of Holocaust survivors at both my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. So he brings in a lot of Israel. He brings in a lot of history, but he also brings in the real narratives, the real stories. And then we spend time talking about justice and how it can be rectified and how it can be a stronger system. And then we always do a mystery connection. Facebook has a great page called Mystery Skype in the classroom. And I've seen people talk about e-pails and, but this is a forum essentially where you can kind of customize and make a post specifically of what you want. So if you're looking for a class to connect in Germany, you can pretty much just put that on there and you'll be amazed of how many teachers will respond back from all over the world. And I do it based on themes. So we had a game, a theme game where we connected with students in Israel, but we actually played with them. Not only do we learn about the country and the culture, but at the end, my students were actually teaching them a games in the United States. And then they were teaching us games that were created in Israel. And we actually played a digital one together real time. And then we did a theme of culture. We just recently connected with kids in Turkey on the theme of music. We connected in Zambia. We connected in India. We talked about plastic. So every pretty much twice a month, I have cross connections with teachers from other countries. And the kids do all the presentations. I don't do anything. The kids go up there. The kids present their screens. The kids talk about it. And the kids literally take the leadership role. And the kids on the other side are doing the same. They're presenting, they're talking, they're asking questions to each other. So the teachers are kind of hands off and just assisting with the actual technology. All right. I'm gonna stop sharing. And Jennifer, I'm gonna give it back to you. There you go. All right. Okay, so you guys, this has been absolutely amazing. If you're like me, like even though I've been working with these presenters for weeks, I still have like sticky notes with all these notes that I've written down. This has been so amazing. So because it's been so amazing, we're not going to have time for our breakout rooms, but we still want you all to connect with members of your grade level. So if you're in elementary school, we still want you to be able to connect with elementary school educators and middle school educators and high school educators here. And because of this, we're going to go ahead and share our breakout slides with you all. And what we're asking you to do on these slides, if you would like, is to go ahead and put your contact information on these slides. Share out with the group some of the things that you've done in your own class as far as connecting your classroom globally or share out some tools that you would like to learn more about. This is all about connections. So right now, Jennifer is putting in some links to the slides for you all. And if you're in elementary school, you can click on the elementary school link. And if you're middle school, click on the middle school link and just add to those slides. And here's an example from our last webinar, someone who was in the middle school group. This is what his slide ended up looking like. So he put his name on there and he put his email on there and he put some ideas or some tools that he wanted to share out with the group. All right, so I know we can't all be in the small groups right now just because of time, but that doesn't mean we can't share our voice and open up these slides and share with other people across our grade level. I think it would be an amazing opportunity. And Isabel, who is an amazing NEA representative, I know she would be so excited to share these slides with everyone if we filled them out. So that would be awesome if you all did that. And Jennifer, I think the links are all in there now. So you all can click on the links and go ahead and start working on those slides. And we also have a survey to fill out. Jennifer, do you wanna jump in? Sure, at the end of the links that I sent, there's also the survey as well. And I'll resend the webinar survey too. But as you can see, there's a heading for each link and then the webinar survey. Add either as well. Well, we really appreciate you being a part of our webinar. And there's gonna be another one coming up, Global Webinar Number Three, Teaching with the Sustainable Development Goals. It will take place in late May and it'll be the same format as well. As mentioned, please complete the short evaluation. If you can't before you leave, if not, we'll be sending that out as well with the links to the each grade level to add into your slide. So thank you so much for coming. And if you have any questions, feel free to stick around. But this concludes our webinar too. Thanks for taking your time to be a part of this. We really appreciate it. On behalf of the Foundation, thanks so much, Jennifer, Makisha and all the terrific presenters. We have really enjoyed this rich conversation and look forward to sharing these resources widely. Thanks again. Thank you, everyone.